ADHD Apps That Actually Help

Mobile devices can be our greatest enemies, as it’s so easy to get lost in the endless doomscrolling. Yet no one prevents us from turning them to our advantage and making use of apps created specifically for us – people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

But there are so many apps for ADHD now! It’s very-very tiring to check and try all of them to find the ones that actually work. We’ve done it for you, and here’s the list of the best ADHD apps carefully selected to ease your life.

Key Takeaways

• Mobile apps can be helpful for managing ADHD by turning phones into productivity tools instead of distractions. Apps made for ADHDers feature tools and techniques that help manage the symptoms and resolve the struggle of everyday routine.
• As people with ADHD struggle with sticking to habits and remembering tasks, some apps help create routines and build habits, as well as manage tasks. Examples include Amazing Marvin, Finch, Llama Life.
• There are free tools on the web too! Free apps may provide less but users can benefit from them nonetheless. Examples of good ones are Dwellingright, Theraview, Goblin Tools, Think Divergent, etc.
• Another group of mobile apps helps relieve the stress connected with ADHD, as well as manage the symptoms and fight procrastination. E.g. HeyZen,  Bionic Reading, Cold Turkey, Fores, Focus@Will.
• While apps for ADHDers are helpful tools, they require effort and determination to see real benefits.

ADHD reminder, time management, and routine creation apps

We’re, ADHDers, notoriously time-blind and forgetful creatures. Simple-to-use reminders and routine builders simplify life greatly.

Amazing Marvin

How does it help?

This app is basically a combination of various organizational tools that include task management, to-do lists, daily and monthly schedules, etc. It’s a tool for personal productivity, but you can also share tasks and delegate projects to other people.

There, you can: 

• set and track time for specific projects, 
• highlight the most difficult tasks with the frog sign, 
• set reminders to review certain tasks, 
• use the Pomodoro timer,
• drag and drop tasks to a specific hour on a calendar, 
• and a lot more. 

Right, it has a lot of features, but the navigation remains very simple, as does the process of creating the tasks. We are all trying not to overwhelm ourselves with the mess of long to-do lists, and Marvin shows you only what you need for a day, making your brain focus only on the set tasks.

There are many templates for creating personalized routines, while schedules and lists are completely customizable: you can even choose their colors! Marvin’s AI can analyze your schedules and activity patterns to advise you on why you procrastinate and how you should optimize your routine.

By the way, what we found extremely cute is that when you finish a task, a little Marvin mascot is dancing with joy for your progress! Doesn’t it encourage you to keep going?

Available on

It has apps for iOS and Android devices, but, as they claim, the desktop app is the best and has the richest set of functionalities.

Pricing

• Free for the first 30 days, or you can explain your unique circumstances to Marvin via email so that they give you a free subscription to their services.
• $12 per month for a monthly subscription.
• $8 per month for a yearly subscription.

ADHD community decision

9/10

Finch

How does it help?

This app is for those who need a gentle nudge to practice self-care and journaling. When you download the app, you get an avatar—a bird that you need to take care of by taking care of yourself. By performing acts of kindness, writing down your thoughts, and doing breathing exercises, you give the bird energy for going on adventures.

There, you can communicate with other birds, who are your friends or just random people scattered around the world who are struggling with similar mental health problems. Also, if you’re being consistent with your daily habits, you’ll win streaks and receive rewards. For example, you can win more cute pets to take care of!

To nurture the bird, watch it grow, and buy clothes for it is undoubtedly amazing. But journaling for self-reflection, quizzes, guided breathing, reaching your goals, etc. is a great way to start a healing journey and, through gamified self-care experience, integrate healthy habits into your life in a fun way.

Available on

• Android
• iOS

Pricing

• Free for 7 days.
• $39.99 for the annual subscription.
• $5.99 for the monthly subscription.

ADHD community decision

7/10

Llama Life

How does it help?

It’s a user-friendly and pleasant-to-work-with app that claims to help not simply create to-do lists but actually complete tasks with the integrated countdown timer. There you can break tasks into smaller parts, clearly see when the task starts and ends, and play soundscapes (the sounds of a beach, thunderstorm, wind, etc.).

What’s cool about Llama Life is that you can label your chores as “boring,”  “fun,” or “easy,”  and, according to your working pattern, the app will suggest those that would be more efficient to do now. You can also set it to play chimes every, let’s say, six minutes to keep you on track, and the alarm at the deadline of every task. By the way, the alarm can be only visual so that your phone flashes color without any sound!

Available on

• Desktop
• iOS

Pricing

• $6 per month
• $39 per year

ADHD community decision

9/10

Best free apps for ADHD

Dwellingright

How does it help?

The app enables you to create important tasks, prioritize them, and break them down into separate categories. Also, it helps to organize documents and contacts and attach your own photos to each task! It has a special feature that, according to your schedule, predicts what tasks you’ll need to do in the future, so, after some time, you won’t even need to manually create your weekly schedule every time, as AI will do it for you.

What’s cool about the app is that you can share some basic chores with your friends and partners and, for example, assign tasks like cleaning dishes to them!

Available on

• iOS
• Android

Pricing

Free

ADHD community decision

7/10 (straightforward and without any fancy features)

Theraview

How does it help?

Here, you can create a schedule of ADHD medications that you are to take. The app sends you mobile notifications when the medication will start to kick in, when it’ll wear off, when you’ll be able to fall asleep, and, of course, when you are to take them.

Theraview supports the most popular ADHD drugs such as Adderall, Concerta, Ritalin, MYDAYIS, and others. The app promises complete privacy of your data and offers a parent mode feature to track their children’s medication intake.

Available on

• iOS
• iPadOS

Pricing

Free

ADHD community decision

9/10 (amazing, but there is no app for Android)

Goblin Tools

How does it help?

It’s a set of seven tools that greatly ease life for ADHD and autistic people. There you can quickly:

• break tasks into smaller ones,
• paste an email from someone and find out if you’re misreading its tone,
• estimate how much a task will take,
• find out what dish you can cook with the combination of products you have in your fridge,
• dump a disorganized list of duties and get a neat schedule regardless of how many tasks are on your list. Then, you can cross out the tasks you’ve done and even download a whole schedule.

We love this website, and if you’re on a budget, it’s got everything you need to get organized.

Available on

It’s a website that can be reached through both desktop and mobile devices. Also, there’s an app for Android and iPad.

Pricing

Free

ADHD community decision

10/10 (perfect quality-to-(no)cost ratio)

Think Divergent

How does it help?

It’s a great app that mimics a huge online coworking space, where you can work together with other neurodivergent people. 

1. You go to the app, and it immediately finds you a work partner. 
2. You work for 30 minutes side by side, each engaged in its own project. 
3. You can support each other only via a text chat!

The app allows you to create your own communities with friends or other users who also work or study, for example, at 9 a.m. on weekends. Basically, you’ve got a chance to create your own online supportive space that will encourage you to keep going and won’t allow you to fall into procrastination.

Available on

• A website for desktops
• iOS
• Android

Pricing

Free

ADHD community decision

10/10 (supportive online working partners are great) 

Apps for managing ADHD symptoms

Inattentiveness, forgetfulness, impulsivity, and struggles with concentration are only some of the symptoms that ADHDers face on a daily basis. The mobile apps below help to deal with them in an easier way.

HeyZen

Have you heard of the “holistic approach” to treating ADHD symptoms? HeyZen is about it. They’ve created daily bundles of yoga therapy, meditation, and podcasts—all targeted at specific emotions, thoughts, and muscle groups that should be worked through in combination.

HeyZen believes that mental, emotional, and physical health are interconnected, so to truly heal ADHD, we need to strengthen them all together. All the practices are backed up by scientific evidence and created by mental health experts. 

So, you can basically manage symptoms and improve your executive function by naturally producing a bunch of neurotransmitters in the brain through physical and mental activities.

Also, each day you’ll acquire a certain skill based on cognitive-behavioral therapy: for example, how to restructure negative self-talk, stop losing things, or become more time-aware. And, if you need, there are SOS-meditations to quickly stop panic attacks, crying, or the overflow of negative thoughts.

It’s cool that you can set your schedule for each healing activity, and HeyZen will send you reminders on when you plan to meditate for a few minutes and when there’s a time for a yoga session.

Available on

• iOS 
• Android

Pricing

• A free trial period
• Starting from ~$22 per year

ADHD community decision

10/10 (combining physical and mental is cool)

Bionic Reading

How does it help?

One of the most persistent ADHD symptoms is the inability to concentrate on reading due to inattention, hyperactivity, and dyslexia. The program highlights the first letters of words to facilitate more in-depth reading and concentration, as our brains don’t focus on the whole world but only on their beginnings. As the mental effort on the brain lessens, it starts to comprehend and memorize more information that it has consumed. Bionic Reading can convert texts of various formats and automatically adjust the texts on any website.

At first, we also thought that it sounded ridiculous, but it has become a game changer for those of us who need to read a lot on a daily basis. A placebo or real science? We haven’t found any research on it, but it just works!

Pricing

• The free version includes 2,000 character conversion
• $2.25 per month

ADHD community decision

7/10 (no scientific proves)

Apps for procrastination

Cold Turkey

How does it help?

It’s a great app that blocks all the websites and applications for the amount of time you need. You may even block YouTube channels, websites with specific keywords in them, and even the whole internet! Also, you may organize those websites in groups to conveniently block them, depending on the day and the project you’re working on. Then, set the breaks in between the tasks to make the blocked websites available automatically.

Unlike other tools, it’s not that easy to remove the block, and it’s the biggest advantage of Cold Turkey. Some even uninstall a whole app to steal a moment of Instagram doomscrolling. But those like us, who are determined to get things done, better invest the energy into real work instead of trying to outsmart our productive selves.

Available on

Every browser on desktops

Pricing

• Free for 7 days
• $39 for lifetime access from all your personal computers

ADHD community decision

9/10

Forest

How does it help?

This anti-procrastination app doesn’t just make you work but guilt-trip you to work, and for some of us, it works great! So, the idea is that you plant a virtual tree every time you start a task and, as you progress through it, the tree grows, but once you stop… it withers and eventually dies.

There’s a special forest in the app with various colorful trees (there are 90 species!) that you’ve grown through your hard work, and it’s actually motivating to look at how many tasks you’ve accomplished. By the way, Forest claims to actually invest some money into building real forests on Earth!

Available on

• iOS
• Android
• Chrome extension for desktop

Pricing

$3.99 as a one-time payment, but there are in-app purchases for some extra app’s features

ADHD community decision

6/10 (guilt tripping isn’t for everyone)

Focus@Will

How does it help?

The app has many variations of white, brown, and pink noise to help you concentrate on a task or a project. Basically, this music in the background eliminates all other distractions for your brain, and the app changes the rhythm and patterns at the intervals right for you.

Focus@Will claims to base its music on 7 years of research, and each melody is created with the help of neuroscientists. So, give it a try if you need a carefully thought-out music flow to focus!

Pricing

• Free for 7 days
• $52.49 per year

Available on

• A desktop app
• iOS
• Android

ADHD community decision

8/10 (maybe a bit pricey)

And those are truly helpful ADHD apps?

Even the best apps will never work without your effort and determination! The first step is always on us, while smart programs can greatly assist us along the journey. Once you notice how much progress you’ve achieved and how much easier your everyday life has become, your determination will only become stronger.

So, right, there are no magic pills—only handy tools with which you can create routines, calm down anxiety, soothe inattentiveness, and introduce mindfulness into your life. But for them to work, you need to be consistent and have a strong will to achieve balance in your life.

FAQ

What is the best digital planner for ADHD?

Try Amazing Marvin if you want a sleek and simple design where you can add tasks via a simple drag-and-drop function. If you want something more interactive, with lots of emojis and colors, try Llama Life, which has a productivity tracker and visual and audial alarms.

Is ADD still a thing?

Attention deficit disorder (ADD) is an outdated term for ADHD or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The thing is that doctors used to believe that hyperactivity and inattention signify two different medical conditions. Since 1987, however, the American Psychiatric Association has adopted a single name—ADHD—and divided it into three types (inattentive, hyperactive-impulsive, and combined).

What are the best free ADHD apps?

If you’re looking for a free app that would organize and prioritize tasks, you can tap into Dwellingright. If you need an ADHD app to improve bothersome ADHD symptoms, such as anxiety, inattentiveness, and impulsivity, try HeyZen. The system we’ve created is based on the most recent scientific findings that prove how meditation, physical exercises, and cognitive-behavioral therapy considerably improve the abovementioned symptoms and normalize one’s life.

Is TikTok good for ADHD?

There’s still no real research on whether ADHD can get worse via TikTok usage. Some experts claim that overstimulation from social media can make symptoms much worse. Similarly, it can lead to depression, social isolation, and higher levels of anxiety. Also, the study found that 52% out of 100 TikToks about ADHD were misleading, spreading misinformation about the disorder.

It’s nice to get support from ADHD fellows who understand you, but always check whether the creator is actually a healthcare provider and has proof for their advice.

Do meditations actually work for ADHD?

Yes, and there’s scientific evidence for it. Studies show that subjects felt a 30-81.8% reduction in impulsivity and inattention after practicing mindful meditations. Based on the findings, HeyZen created a set of daily meditations aimed at soothing ADHD symptoms in combination with yoga therapy sessions.